Into the American West

Available for 29 days

We trace the classic migrant trails across the US from the Mississippi River over the Rocky Mountains and out to the Pacific Ocean and you may recognise place names, real and imagined, from Brokeback Mountain to The Oregon Trail and Route 66. The music too evokes open spaces and independent people – from Aaron Copland’s An Outdoor Overture to Ferde Grofé's Grand Canyon Suite to Jessie Montgomery's Starburst. Our readings include passages by indigenous writers from John Rollin Ridge to Louise Erdrich as well as fiction from Amy Tan and Cormac McCarthy and poetry from Walt Whitman and Eliza Snow. The readers are Henry Goodman and Lorelei King. READINGS: On the Mississippi by Hamlin Garland My Ántonia by Willa Cather A Cherokee Love Song by John Rollin Ridge The Jump-Off Creek by Molly Gloss Shane by Jack Schaeffer Sometimes I Go About - Chippewa tribal poem The Sisters Brothers by Patrick deWitt The Grass on the Mountain by Mary Austin The Virginian by Owen Wister Song of the Desert by Eliza Snow Pioneers! O Pioneers! By Walt Whitman Children of the Oregon Trail by Anna Rutgers Van der Loeff The Redwoods by Louis Simpson News of the World by Paulette Jiles The Crossing by Cormac McCarthy When We Sold The Tent by Rhina P Espaillat Wounded by Percival Everett The Joy Luck Club By Amy Tan Brokeback Mountain From Close Range by E Annie Proulx The Nightwatchman by Louise Erdrich Field by Ben Myers If I Should Come Upon Your House Lonely in the West Texas Desert by Natalie Diaz Produced in Salford by Olive Clancy